page_title: Charles Yardley Turner
section_title: Colorist
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Yardley Turner / Biography / Colorist
caption_attribution_description: English: Palace of Horticulture, Pan American Exposition
context_page_description: Charles Yardley "C. Y." Turner was an American painter, illustrator, muralist and teacher. His genre scenes and American historical paintings were popularized through engravings and book illustrations.
context_section_description: Muralist Francis Davis Millet was selected to be director of decoration for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and Turner, who had been runner-up for the job, agreed to be his assistant. Eight years later, Turner was colorist for the entire 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The Chicago exposition had been nicknamed "The White City," because of the color of all but one of its major buildings. Turner described his ambitious color scheme for the Buffalo exposition:
  It was for us to make the color of the exposition tell something, the same story as the sculpture. Accordingly, we have used bright, brilliant hues on the buildings that are suggestive of the early life of man. The horticultural building, for instance, has orange ornaments, with details in brilliant blue, green, yellow and rose. The government building is prevailingly in rich yellow. As one goes up the esplanade, the decorations become more sober. The music hall has a scheme of dull red; the machinery building in green-gray. The electric tower is given over to a harmony of green and gold on an ivory ground. Here the color-key of the whole exposition is struck. The lovely green of Niagara water, rich as the green on the peacock's wing, appears in its purity on the electric tower, to be echoed in every structure of the show-city. Not a building is there which is without its notes of Niagara-green.
caption: Horticulure Building, 1901 Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York
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